Cannes Lions 2011: And the party is back on the beach...

Day five is just beginning at the week-long Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. One of the main attractions for the Indian and other delegates is the Times of India’s Cannes party. After two years, Times hosted the party on the beach again. For some, that was a sign of things being back on track. It helped that India had secured 20 Lions by the end of day five.

The strength of the Indian delegation at Cannes was reiterated at the do, where creative heads, right from Piyush Pandey (Ogilvy India) and Prasoon Joshi (McCann Worldgroup) to KV Sridhar aka Pops (Leo Burnett), Bobby Pawar (Mudra), Josy Paul (BBDO India), Ravi Deshpande (Contract Advertising), Sajan Raj Kurup (Creativeland Asia), Satbir Singh (Euro RSCG India), Nirvik Singh (Grey Worldwide) and others, exchanged notes on how the Festival was faring, after some debate on whether India’s performance was looking up again this year.

Sonal Dabral, Managing Partner, India and Head of Creative-Asia for Bates 141 told exchange4media, “The good thing is that now you are seeing wins from across players than just any one player. A forum like Cannes Lions is very important but if the stronger and bigger agencies have had a bad awards patch, that would not end up affecting the agency, not in the short run for sure.

BBH India’s Managing Partner, Raj Kamble, is positive on India’s overall performance too. He said, “I think India’s overall performance so far has been great. More than anything else, I can see a certain craft in the work. There are lots of big ideas compared to small one-off singles. I really liked Gillette's Shave Sutra, it's was really fun. I've worked on Gillette and I know how tough it is to get the client to agree to ideas such as these. On the other hand, I have a big problem with legally approved scam ads, meaning we have a client and he is alright with it to run once in some small town in some random newspaper.”

Despite the conversations, and arguments in some cases, the spirits of India camp is high at Cannes. In the course of the day, the Indian delegates were divided between the Cannes activities at the Palais des Festivals and the holding company parties on the sidelines of the Festival. Global bosses like Jack Klues (VivaKi), Laura Desmond (Leo Burnett), Mike Cooper (PHD Worldwide), Steve King (ZenithOptimedia) and others reasserted to exchange4media, the company’s focus and expectations from India in days ahead.